Managers
International Mobility
Working together, beyond the codes
The accent is always the other person's.
DORARD, a training and consulting firm, was founded in the Greater Region, one of Europe's most active cross-border areas. Working daily at the intersection of French, German, Luxembourgish and Belgian professional cultures has taught us one essential thing: what makes working together difficult is never what you can see. It's what you can't see: the implicit codes, the unspoken expectations, the ways of being professional that seem obvious, until they no longer are.
Because differences stem not from nationality itself but from constructed professional cultures, our interventions always start from real-life situations, never from labels. Our three programmes address the distinct challenges European companies and managers face in international mobility contexts.
Avant-Poste
For the manager taking up a position abroad
Taking up a position abroad engages the manager well beyond their professional competencies. Like any defining career decision, it can be embraced with enthusiasm, hesitation, or both at once. In every case, the manager finds themselves facing a professional environment whose codes they do not yet fully master: what is said or left unsaid, what is expected of a leader, how trust is built across borders.
Example: A manager accustomed to embodying visible authority and making decisions alone may feel unsettled when facing teams that expect to be consulted before any decision is made, and who only commit wholeheartedly to what they have helped build. This is not resistance. These are different codes.
Avant-Poste is an individual programme that prepares managers for leadership in a new cultural context. Together, we identify their professional experiences as a foundation, then build the bearings they need to exercise leadership effectively abroad.
The objective: the manager fulfils their responsibilities by drawing on their own references, identifying the host country’s professional codes, and adjusting their approach to engage their teams.
Immersion
For the foreign manager joining your organisation
You are recruiting a manager from a different professional environment. They are competent, motivated, and arriving in a context whose codes they do not yet fully master. Technical integration can be managed. What takes more time, and generates more friction, is the cultural integration: understanding what is truly expected of them, and how to demonstrate it.
Example: A manager accustomed to a professional culture where punctuality is an absolute mark of respect, where a meeting agenda is sacred and a decision once made is never revisited, may experience their arrival in an organisation with more flexible codes as a sign of disorganisation, or even a lack of seriousness. The misunderstanding sets in before the work has even begun.
Immersion is an individual programme supporting managers in their first weeks. Building on the concrete situations they encounter, we help them develop the cultural bearings to find their place and contribute fully.
Upon completion, the manager navigates their new environment by identifying implicit codes, adjusting their professional behaviour, and building effective working relationships with colleagues and leadership.
Confluence
For the multicultural team that works, but not yet truly together
Your team brings together employees from different professional cultures. It works. But something gets stuck, in communication, in decisions, in what each person expects from others without saying so.
Example: A team where some consider a commitment final, while others experience it as an adjustable starting point, is not working on the same project, even when it believes it is. The tension is not about the substance. It is about what each person means by "having an agreement."
Confluence is a collective programme for teams that have not yet found their full potential. Grounded in real situations and the diverse backgrounds of its members, it creates the conditions for different professional cultures to meet and thrive together.
Upon completion, the team identifies what drives misunderstandings, establishes shared ways of working that respect differences, and engages collectively around common objectives.
Let's talk about your situation.
Every mobility context is unique. The three programmes presented here are starting points, not fixed formats. If you recognise yourself in one of these situations, or in another that is not yet listed here: Let’s talk !